


aren't you tired tryin' to fill that void

by deandratb



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, s03e12 deleted scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 17:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17944130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Prompt fic; how Schneider got from the laundry room to the couch in Penelope's apartment





	aren't you tired tryin' to fill that void

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lolapola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolapola/gifts).



> Prompt: **what happened after Alex found Schneider in the laundry room**

“ _Abuelita,_  is Mom with you?” Alex’s voice was tinny and tense through the phone.

Like her daughter, she was keeping her cell close by in case someone heard from Schneider--or in case he decided to call. But Alex sounded so serious, so unlike himself, that Lydia didn’t waste time worrying about tying up the line.

“Yes,  _Papito,_  she is right here.”

She waved a hand at Penelope, who left Elena on the couch to join her in the kitchen. Then she put her phone on speaker. “We are both right here.”

“Mom?” 

Penelope’s whole body clenched up. The last time her son sounded that scared, he’d been asking why  _Papi_ wasn’t coming with them, the night she left Victor for good.

“Alex, what’s wrong?”

“I, uh--I’m not sure. But I’m in the laundry room, you and  _Abuelita_  should both come. Okay? Just come.”

“Okay.” Her heart was racing as she hung up, and her  _Mami_ was already halfway out the front door. 

“We’ll be right back,” Penelope told Elena as she followed.

****

Alex wasn’t in the laundry room when they arrived. He was outside it, standing next to the closed door, shifting from one foot to the other. 

His worried eyes landed on hers, and she walked faster down the hall to reach him.

“Schneider’s drunk,” Alex blurted out as soon as they were in hearing range. “He’s not...acting like Schneider.”

Penelope swallowed her sigh, along with her anger and her fear. Alex didn’t need to see any of that. “Okay,  _Papito_. You stay here with your  _Abuelita_. I got this.”

He blocked her from the door before she could take another step. 

“Mom, he didn’t want me to call you. He didn’t want me to call anybody.”

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” she promised him. “ _Mami?_ ”

Lydia gently tugged Alex toward her, out of the way. “ _Tu Mami se encargará de esto_.”

Penelope walked into the laundry room, not sure what to expect. She didn’t see Schneider at first, sitting on the floor between the folding island and the washing machines. If she hadn’t been looking for him, he would have been well-hidden. 

She assumed that was the point.

Closing the door behind her with a soft click, Penelope walked to the row of machines, keeping a few feet back from the pathetic picture Schneider made. He was, to put it charitably, a mess. 

His long limbs were folded into what had to be deeply uncomfortable angles, with his face pinched like he was already starting to feel the effects of an oncoming hangover. He’d chosen a really bad place for that, Penelope noted, with the glaring florescent lights of the laundry room overhead. 

She couldn’t even begin to process his lack of pants and mussed hair. When she and her  _Mami_ had confronted him in his apartment, he might have been behaving differently--defensive and anxious and twitchy--but he had still seemed like Schneider. She didn’t recognize this man.

Watching him with his eyes still shut, Penelope considered her options. Victor had always been a combative drunk, and Schneider had been sober for so long she didn’t know if she needed to worry about that with him. 

 _That was part of the problem,_  she thought. She had only ever known him,  **really**  known him as more than their trust-fund landlord, since he’d been sober. Schneider’s sobriety was so central to who he was that she took it for granted.

Clearly, she couldn’t do that anymore. 

As hard as it was to face the situation they were in--because whether Penelope liked it or not, what affected Schneider affected her too--her family was waiting for her to handle it.  _You’ve dealt with worse,_ she reminded herself, and deliberately relaxed before she spoke.

“Hey.”

Schneider turned her way with no expression on his ruddy face at all. She figured he’d heard her come in...but he’d already run from her once today. It wasn’t like she was expecting a warm welcome. 

“Hey, Pen.”

“Don’t.”

“Huh?”

Right now, all that mattered was getting Schneider sobered up and back on the program. She knew that. She couldn’t let him out of her sight again until he went back to being himself. But holding back her feelings wasn’t easy.

He was staring at her from his sprawled position up against a machine, his eyes half shut, and she couldn’t completely maintain the calm face she’d put on.

“Don’t talk to me like you always do. Don’t act like this is normal, Schneider. Nicknames and you’re pantsless in the laundry room--after lying to my face?”

“Right.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, blinking hard as though that could make him less drunk. “Sorry about that. I just...needed to get out of my apartment, and you weren’t gonna let me.”

It took what Penelope considered admirable restraint on her part, but she kept her voice low and level, her words just between the two of them instead of reaching her  _Mami_ and Alex. 

“Do you know how you sound right now? My fifteen year old son pulls out excuses like that when I catch him making reckless,  **dangerous**  choices.” 

“Well, I’m not your son,” Schneider replied, turning away from her to drag himself into a standing position using the washer. “You may think it’s your job to boss the whole world around, Penelope, but you’re not my mother.”

She shook her head at him, towering over her now, his pants crumpled in one hand while the other braced on the washer kept him swaying upright.

“No. I’m not. But  **my**  mother, a woman who thinks of you like her second, incredibly pale son, is right outside. And neither of us are going anywhere until you pull yourself together.”

She took a chance, and a step forward. “Schneider, this ends now. Anybody could walk in on you here. The McGurbs, with their grandson, needing you to babysit. It could have been Elena coming to tell you she passed her driver’s test.”

His face cleared, the tension of the moment lost to pride. “She did? That’s awesome!”

Penelope let her words bite back a little, because her kids were a part of this, and they deserved so much better. “Yeah, she’s upstairs right now wanting to celebrate. And her whole family is down here, and she doesn’t know why yet.”

Schneider nodded, stepping back. “Then you should go. You can tell her--I don’t know. Tell her whatever you want, just make sure she knows I’m proud of her, okay?”

Penelope sighed, and walked right into his personal space. Even a drunk Schneider, she was pretty sure she could take, if it came down to it. And he wasn’t going to make this easy; she needed every advantage she could get. 

“I said her  **whole**  family is down here, Schneider. She’s going to want you at the party. Come upstairs.”

He wrapped his arms around his stomach, letting his pants fall to the floor. “No. It’s a good day for her, she shouldn’t see me like this.”

“Can’t argue with that,” she agreed easily, grabbing his pants with one hand and lacing her fingers through his with the other. She squeezed his hand and waited for him to look at her. 

“None of us wanted to see you like this, Schneider.  **You**  never wanted that either, I know you didn't. But here we are. So I’ll have _Mami_  grab you some clean clothes, and you’ll come upstairs and borrow our shower and tell Elena you’re happy for her, yourself.”

He shook his head, but didn’t let go of her hand. “I don’t...Penelope, I don’t remember how to do this.”

“I know.” She started moving toward the door, leading him along after her. She wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that he wasn’t arguing anymore--that all the fight seemed to have gone out of him. Without it, he just seemed...

_Broken._

“You start small,” Penelope told him on the way. “One step at a time. First up, a shower.”

“Yeah.”

“And you remember that things are different now. It’s not 2011, Schneider. You’re not going to be doing this by yourself.”

He didn’t say anything in response to that, but he gripped her hand harder. Hoping to distract him long enough to keep him from changing his mind and bolting, she added lightly, “At least this isn’t the first time your tenants have seen you in your underwear. Remember last Fourth of July?”

“Yes, Penelope, I know,” Schneider replied automatically, falling into the familiar argument. “No more fireworks that 'fell off a truck.' Stop, drop, and roll. I only scarred a little."

Lydia was waiting when Penelope opened the door. She didn’t even blink at Schneider standing there in his boxers--just rested her hand at the small of his back and led him away. His slumped walk made him seem smaller beside her.

Penelope watched them go, her  _Mami_ murmuring to him out of earshot, until they turned the corner at the end of the hall.

“Are you okay?” She asked Alex once they were alone.

“Yeah. Is he gonna be alright?”

“He’s going to be just fine, baby. We’re going to make sure of it.”

“He got so upset,” Alex confessed. “I’ve never seen him like that. What happened?”

“I’m not sure,  _Papito_.” She hugged him from the side, resting her check against his for a second. Nothing grounded her faster than her kids. 

“But I’m going to find out.”

****

When Penelope and Alex got back to the apartment, Lydia was already there, listening to the running water from the other side of the bathroom door. 

Elena was still on the couch where they’d left her, but Schneider’s arrival had visibly deflated her mood. Her eyes were huge behind her glasses, leaving Penelope to wonder what exactly had happened when Schneider came in.

Her daughter’s frozen expression and nervous posture on the couch reminded Penelope of when the kids were little, when things with Victor started to fall apart. 

Despite Schneider’s earlier protests,  **all**  of this reminded her of Victor. How could it not? 

She was just grateful that Schneider wasn’t dangerous, to himself or anyone else. It probably helped that he was temperamentally different; Penelope didn’t have much reason to think about it, usually, but Schneider was the most laid-back person she’d ever met. His temper was nearly impossible to set off--and while he was a really emotional guy, he directed his pain toward himself instead of at other people.

 _Obviously,_  she thought with an inward sigh, hearing the shower turn off. 

She was glad they’d found him, that he’d agreed to come home with her. But that didn’t make this any easier. 

Trying to convince Victor to get help and having him brush her off, seeing him spiral, had been really hard.

In some ways, today hurt even more, knowing that Schneider needed her and she really had no idea what she was doing. Her only experience with recovering alcoholics was the kind that ended in divorce.

Schneider needed her family too much for her to screw this up. 

_And they needed him too much to lose him._

Elena disappeared into her room, saying nothing while Lydia guided Schneider past her to the couch. 

He seemed clearer now, Penelope noted with relief. She had no desire to try reasoning with a drunk and evasive Schneider ever again. Hopefully he was sobering up fast.

Her  _Mami_ went to the kitchen, pulling out a pot and busying herself there. She kept sneaking glances at Schneider from her spot next to the stove, even though Penelope was right there next to him.  _He wasn’t going anywhere._

Schneider closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch, looking like he was trying not to cry. A few feet away, Alex stood rooted to the spot, unable to find the right words but trying to be a comfort. 

Penelope knew she should smooth things over while her  _Mami_ made him soup, but she didn’t have it in her. The things she needed to say to Schneider wouldn’t comfort him very much, and they weren’t things she wanted to say in front of Alex. Or her mom. 

They could wait until she found a way to get him alone. For now, she clasped her hands together, pushing down the desire to reach out and shake sense into him...or just hold him, period. 

He looked more devastated than she felt.

Elena reemerged from her room and beelined for the kitchen, whispering something to her  _Abuelita_ , who spoke softly back and patted her cheek. 

When they came out to the living room together, Lydia with chicken soup and Elena with a damp cloth, Penelope had to smile. Schneider was going to be so taken care of through his recovery this time, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

It sucked that she always had to be the bad cop, though. 

She watched her family surround Schneider with love and reassurance and forgiveness, and braced for what came next. 

Because as much as he needed people who loved him through the worst, he needed somebody to hold him accountable, too. She had always had that in her  _Mami_ \--but all Schneider had was her. 

Penelope waited while her  _Mami_ and the kids left them alone, and hoped she would be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Shallow" by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.


End file.
